Around this time last 12 months, I quit The Bachelor. Despite never really liking the show all that much, I count this as a substantial achievement, because I are likely to be a completist: Whether it’s stacks of unread magazines or rows upon rows of open browser tabs, I find it hard to let things go. Plus, I believe everyone must have at the very least one TV show they’ll watch at about 50 percent attention while mostly doing other things (for me, that’s often opening much more tabs on my struggling devices—it’s a vicious cycle). But during Zach Shallcross’ season of The Bachelor, I noticed that my attention was continuously dipping all the way down to more like 25 percent. Sometimes 10. I believe there even were times there once I managed to have the TV on but absorb zero content by any means, a feat that might be impressive if it weren’t also pathetic.
So I quit. I stayed away for the remainder of the season, and for the following Bachelorette season too. (I still watched Paradise, but I met the standard of fifty percent attention—hit me up and we will totally chat about half of the things that happened.) For once, I felt good about my decisions and my relationship with this vexing franchise.
How, then, did I find yourself here, once more scurrying home on Monday nights so as to tune in? And not only that, but able to declare that I actually like the show, for the first time if not ever, then in a really very long time?
Ladies and gentlemen, his name is Joey Graziadei, and he’s this season’s Bachelor. Joey was introduced to Bachelor Nation during the most up-to-date season of The Bachelorette, the one I didn’t watch. After coming in second (meaning he got dumped by the Bachelorette), he landed the gig as the next Bachelor, and as his season approached, I began hearing from friends I sometimes watched the show with that he was actually … nice. They liked him. Nothing bad to say. I can’t inform you how unusual that is. No one I do know ever likes the Bachelor. You look ahead to the ladies, and sometimes you want the Bachelorette, but the Bachelor? Never. Once I saw some photos of Joey, my about-face was complete. (I’m but a weak woman.) Once more unto the breach.
The show is in some ways the same because it ever was, and this season follows the familiar format it all the time has: Just a few dozen women arrive to compete for the lead’s love and a spotlight, and week by week, their number is whittled down via “rose ceremonies,” wherein the Bachelor hands out flowers to the contestants he wishes to remain. If all goes in keeping with plan, in the end, he’ll offer the last rose to the final woman standing, then get down on one knee and propose to her. The show has been airing for greater than 20 years now, and the concept would have grown stale even when it weren’t further diminished by its track record: It’s increasingly rare for couples to remain together long enough to make it to the altar.
And all of that continues to be true this time around. In fact, the show seems to have made just one small, if meaningful, tweak to the formula: Literally all that modified is it solid someone good as the Bachelor this time. My friends were right about Joey. This mustn’t be radical, to choose a lead who’s actually appealing for a show presumably designed to entertain. And yet this guy, a 28-year-old tennis coach from outside Philadelphia, is, consider it or not, form of a revelation.
What’s so great about him? To start with the external, Joey is handsome. That’s a given. The Bachelor is all the time, broadly speaking, handsome. It wasn’t until this season, though, that I spotted that while the guys they select are all the time generically attractive, most of them usually are not particularly handsome to me. I actually have to come clean with being guilty of sometimes—OK, often—snobbily considering myself more enlightened than the remainder of the Bachelor audience. I imagine them as a monolith of ladies with boring, white-bread taste—who else would swoon over a football player, or a pilot? But Joey, together with his sweet smile, curly hair, and frequent stubble, is handsome to me specifically. This shouldn’t be me shooting my shot, just using myself as a knowledge point, because I do know that quite a lot of women feel the same way. Emma Gray and Claire Fallon, the hosts of Love to See It, a podcast that recaps the show, are on the same page. “It’s just, I’m so into this Bachelor,” one in all them said on a recent episode. “We’re really showing our asses here, but we are obsessed with Joey,” the other agreed. It’s like The Bachelor’s producers realized something women have known for some time, which is that a lot of us don’t need a Gaston or perhaps a Jacob Elordi—we wish a Jeremy Allen White or a sensitive Irish cutie. As a user on Reddit put it, the show “must’ve hired someone who finally understood the female gaze.” Others have described him as “a man written by a woman.”
So while Joey is physically attractive in a less meathead-y way than usual, which is a plus for a few of us, it’s also his kind, sensitive personality that elevates him to something special. He has quickly develop into referred to as one in all the most thoughtful Bachelors in history, and he is especially renowned for—I do know that is going to sound nuts, but go along with me here—his listening abilities. Listening? We’re praising men for listening now? Yes, the bar for men is low, but in addition … Joey is just that good a listener. Here’s how Vulture’s Bachelor recapper Ali Barthwell put it:
If Li’l Joey is one thing, he’s an lively listener. He is following up an announcement with an issue. He’s repeating key information. He’s telling the reader during Out Loud Reading Circle who’s struggling to take their time. This man has big “Classroom Aide” energy, and I’m here for it.
In addition to creating him more attractive, Joey’s lively listening abilities have a direct impact on the quality of the relationships he’s forming with the contestants, which results in a greater, more entertaining show. On a recent episode of the podcast Bachelor Party, one in all the hosts, Callie Curry, commented, “I feel like Joey is a Bachelor that [the contestants] really want, and we haven’t seen that in a while.” Her co-host Juliet Litman agreed: “Like, they’re actually attracted to—that we’re all actually attracted to.”
A recent episode of the show featured a cute moment between Joey and a contestant named Maria in the back of a automobile. They were in Montreal, and Maria had Joey tell her, “Je t’aime,” to which she said back, “Merci!” Litman praised the exchange for example of “real flirting that we don’t really see very often on this television show, good banter, good chat.” Once again, we’re coping with a low bar here, in that so a lot of us have spent years watching a show that’s explicitly about romance but features little good flirting or banter, but nevertheless! Now we’ve got it, and by God, we prefer it.
Ratings for the show are up. On his podcast, Nick Viall, elder Bachelor statesman, recently casually noted, “Joey, you could argue, has in some ways saved the Bachelor franchise.” It’s true that a few of the rankings bump may very well be attributed to The Golden Bachelor, last fall’s phenomenon, which earned the franchise a few of its best buzz in ages. And it’s hardly the case that everybody loves Joey. Viall, for example, made his “saving the franchise” comment inside minutes of comparing Joey’s hairstyle to that of an Oompa Loompa and accusing Joey of never sharing anything about himself. There have been similar grumblings elsewhere online. And actually there was the whole press cycle about Joey confusing Gypsy Rose Blanchard for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Yes, really. Maybe it is a sign that I’m just too in the tank for Joey, but I actually found that somewhat endearing. It was an easy mistake, and to be honest, I don’t really care if he knows much about the Supreme Court—I leave that to Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, not the Bachelor. While I don’t personally think not knowing who RBG is makes someone dumb, it’s also value noting that in these himbo-affirming times, dumb can actually be a selling point.
Given all this, why doesn’t the show simply all the time select a Bachelor who isn’t a dud? What took its producers so long to grasp the basic math that likable star equals higher show? A stand-up guy is tough to search out in case you’re just one other single woman on the dating market, but in case you’ve got the resources of knowledgeable casting department, it seems doable, no? Something I heard on yet one more Bachelor podcast, Game of Roses, complicated my considering on this matter. After the two hosts agreed that Joey is “arguably one of the best Bachelors we’ve ever had,” one in all them added, “But it’s not just him, it’s how he’s presented.” Speaking of last 12 months’s Bachelor, Zach, the one who drove me to stop watching the show and whose season is widely thought to be a little bit of a flop, Chad Kultgen said, “I have certain credible information that paints a different picture of a man who was very vivacious, very humorous, very engaging, a man we did not see in that season.” Co-host Lizzy Pace responded incredulously, “You’re saying you have secret information that Zach was a cool dude?”
That’s exactly what Kultgen was saying. It was his contention that it was editing and other production decisions that were really chargeable for The Bachelor’s improvements this season. It wasn’t that the show was giving Joey edit a lot as the editors were letting his personality shine through for a change. Back to that moment in the automobile between Joey and Maria: “In any other season in recent history, that doesn’t make the cut,” Kultgen said. “They give us just this little 20-second bit of a scene that makes us see who they are as people.” It’s an interesting theory, and if it’s true, hats off to the producers. But I still think Joey deserves a bit credit. He’ll probably do something that destroys all his goodwill soon, but until then: best Bachelor ever.
Credit : slate.com